


Your Touch Is What I Need

by Freekish



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, M/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Slow Build, it ends happy, like just a tiny bit, little bit sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3867265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freekish/pseuds/Freekish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eren gets in an emotional funk, he likes to disappear for a while. Mikasa and Armin don’t know where he goes when he leaves, and they worry about him. There is someone who knows how to find him. Jean. He never reveals where he finds Eren, but he sends a reassuring text that he’s with him and he’ll bring him back home in the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Touch Is What I Need

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know where this idea came from. All of this is kind of a raw unedited thought that my brain needed to get out so I apologize if the flow is weird. 
> 
> So here, have a weird feels filled fic with these two boys.

It’s a writhing sea of fluorescent movement. People moving with and against the tide of swaying limbs and bouncing feet. Music is forced through the speakers over head and the bass trembles under everyone’s feet. The air reeks of stale body spray and sweat but it doesn’t seem to deter people from continuing to dance and move to the beat of the music. Everything is covered in a blue ambient light from the plethora of black lights throughout the establishment. It seems everyone is wearing light colored clothes and have painted their bodies with fluorescent markings to make themselves brighter in such a dark place. Except, there are a few black spots in the bright mass.

Eren doesn’t want to be noticed. He wants to fall away, let the bass of the music carry him; turn off all thoughts and just feel. His body moves on its own accord following the beat blasting out of the speakers. Guys and girls slide in as temporary dance partners but eventually everyone gets lost in this crowd and drifts away. Eren would get swept along with them too, but something always pulls him back. 

Familiar hands smooth over his waist from behind him and rest against his hip bones. Eren melts into the touch, pressing his back against the welcoming chest, lifting an arm to cup the back of the guy’s head, and threading his fingers through lit up bleached blonde hair. The music shifts to something with a deeper bass and a sensual rhythm to move their hips to. He lets the music flow through him and feels the body behind him move with him. His eyes fall closed as he tilts his head back against his partner’s shoulder and lets this moment wash over him. 

“You ok?” Even with the loud music, he can still hear Jean’s voice next to his ear.

Without missing a beat, Eren turns towards Jean so they’re face to face. “Yeah.”

Their thighs slot together to bring their hips closer. Jean slides his hands to Eren’s lower back and his neck gets wrapped in the brunette’s arms. He presses their foreheads together, securing them in their little bubble.

“Just let me know when you want to go and I’ll take you home ok?” 

Eren doesn’t say anything, just nods his head and keeps moving. They leave an hour later.

-

They’ve done this several times, ever since Jean first found him by accident. Jean had been at the club because he was, sort of, friends with the DJ that was playing that night. He had been sitting at the bar nursing his drink when his phone buzzed in his pocket and he unlocked it to read a mass text sent out by Mikasa. Eren’s “disappeared” again. Seriously, Mikasa and Armin worry about him too much. The kid’s 22 years old, he should be allowed to go out on his own without those two freaking out. Though, he has to admit, Eren tends to be a magnet for trouble, or he use to be, not so much anymore. So, he ignored the text and scanned the crowd writhing on the dance floor. That’s when he sees Eren walk in.

Eren heads straight for the orgy of people and works his way to the center of the mass, a spot of black in the sea of fluorescent colors. The blonde watches him dance with abandon, completely lost to the beat of the music. His body moves on its own or with whoever comes within his vicinity. He never stops moving, he just keeps going. Jean can’t seem to look away. For the first few minutes it was entertaining to watch but the longer he did, the more he realized something was off. This wasn’t the energetic Eren that he knew, he seems lost and all too willing to follow the white rabbit down that hole. 

Jean leaves his perch at the bar and weaves through the crowd until he gets to Eren. He calls out his name and puts his hands on his shoulders to get Eren to notice he’s standing right in front of him. 

Eren’s startled. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Friends with the DJ,” he points his thumb at the booth in the corner of the room. “Come on.”

Eren gets tugged by his arm by Jean over to the bar where he orders him some water. He gladly takes the cup that is offered to him and downs its contents quickly. Up close, it’s more apparent that something is up with Eren.

“Are you ok?”

All the brunette does is shrug. 

Jean pulls his phone out of his pocket and fiddles with it in his hands. “Mikasa sent out a text asking people if they’ve seen you.”

Eren rolls his eyes and mumbles under his breath.

Now that Jean has seen him, he can kind of understand why Mikasa and Armin might worry about him a little bit. 

“Look, I won’t tell them where you are but I need to at least tell them that I saw you and you’re in one piece.”

“Fine, whatever.” he huffs. Eren looks at Jean while he is typing away on his phone. 

“Do you need a place to crash tonight?” He figures since Eren was getting away from Mikasa and Armin maybe he doesn’t want to go back to them so soon.

“I might.” Eren looks back at the crowd when the song changes. “Dance with me.”

Jean’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why?”

“Why not?”

Eren doesn’t give Jean time to answer, grabs his wrist and pulls him into the mass of bodies.

-

The silence outside the club is almost as deafening as the music inside but the cool night air is a welcome sensation. Both of them start heading for the parking lot just a block over. Eren didn’t drive here. He lives fairly close by, just a 30 minute walk, but he still climbs into the passenger side of the blonde’s car. Jean doesn’t take him home, he never does. The drive is quiet all the way to Jean’s apartment in the outskirts of the city. Standing in the parking lot of his building, Eren can barely hear the hustle and bustle of the city that he can usually hear right outside his home. He likes how quiet it is out here. Jean leads the way up the stairs to his third floor corner apartment and holds open the door for Eren to follow inside. They walk passed the kitchen, the living room that has a pull out couch and head down the hall to the bedroom in the back. It’s pretty late but they both take turns showering and then climb into Jean’s bed. Nothing happens. They lie there until they fall asleep.

Their silence drags into the morning after. Sometimes they chat a little bit over their cup of coffee but most days whatever goes unsaid hangs between them. They never bring up the night before, or any past times that Jean has found him in that club. After the coffee is gone, Jean drives Eren back home, where the brunette will thank him before getting out of the car. Sometimes those are the only words spoken during those mornings.

Jean isn’t sure how to classify what this is with Eren. Armin and Mikasa stopped sending out mass texts and just text Jean whenever Eren goes out, which is about once or twice a month. As soon as he gets the message, he grabs his keys and heads in town. He always finds Eren already out on the floor and makes his way over to him. It started with them just dancing side by side but over time they shifted closer to dance with each other. Yeah, they danced rather close and in a sensual manner but it never escalated to anything. Eren clung to him like he was a life float, afraid of drifting away, and Jean held on to him to make sure he didn’t. 

This may come out the wrong way but, even though Jean is there to, in a way, comfort Eren, he still enjoys that time spent with him. There are times he catches himself wondering what it would be like to do this with Eren when he wasn’t in his emotional funk. He always shakes his head of those thoughts though.

-

Something changes after a few months. One night Eren decides not to go to the club, he goes straight to Jean.

The knock on the door startles Jean. When he answers the door, Eren barges past him and heads towards the living room. Jean’s quick to follow but stops when he sees Eren pace back an forth a few times. 

“Ere—“

“Why do you always come find me?” Eren doesn’t yell at him but his voice is loud.

All Jean does is stare at him wide-eyed, “I—“

“You know where I go, so why do you show up? You could easily text Armin or Mikasa back, tell them I’m fine and just stay here, so why _don’t_ you?” His expressions and tone switches between anger, to confusion, to hurt and back again. 

“I go to make sure you’re ok.”

His fists tighten down by his sides, “I can take care of myself.” 

“I know you can. I’m talking about up here.” Jean points to his own head. “Wherever you go in your head seems so far away. I go find you to make sure you don’t get lost in there.”

Eren doesn’t say anything.

“If you don’t want me to show up anymore just say so, I’ll leave you be.”

Jean waits for a response and doesn’t push for an answer.

“I want you there.” The response is mumbled and soft, so Jean doesn’t quite hear him.

“What’d you say?”

Eren sighs. “The other night I lied to Armin and Mikasa and told them I was going to the gym but I went to the club. I didn’t want them to call you. I was there for a few hours and I left feeling the same way as when I got there. It made me think that maybe it was the fact that you weren’t there that made the difference. When you’re there, I don’t know, I feel calm. You don’t nag me and ask me questions constantly. You don’t try to fix me, you’re just…there.”

Jean shifts on his feet. “So what did you tell them tonight?”

“That I was going to see you.” Eren takes a step closer, his hands now relaxed at his sides. 

The blonde nods his head, hopefully now he won’t get a text from his worrying friends. “So now what?”

Eren takes a deep breath and lets it out quick. “Do you mind if we just sit here. I don’t care if we watch tv, a movie or if you just read.” He gestures to the mountains of books on Jean’s bookshelf next to the entertainment center. “It’s your house, you pick.”

The stove timer decides to go off right then, tearing a hole in the tension in the room.

“Have you eaten yet?” 

Eren shakes his head. 

“I’ve got extra.” He tilts his head towards the kitchen, gesturing Eren to follow. 

Jean’s a really good cook. He doesn’t make anything fancy, just sticks to the classic homemade meals. Anything he makes though wraps you in a feeling of being home. Eren counts himself lucky that he chose this night to go see Jean because he pulls out his famous homemade mac and cheese, the delicious aroma wafts out of the oven when he opens it. Jean never spills any secrets about his recipes, but Eren swears witchcraft is involved because this mixture of cheese and noodles is devine.

They eat in the living room and Jean pops in a dvd. Silence hangs over them again, but it’s comfortable. When Jean finishes his plate, his eyes are glued to the movie he’s seen tens of times as he places his plate down on the coffee table. Eren grabs his plate when he’s done and brings them back into the kitchen. He places them in the sink, trying not to make a bunch of noise and then seals up the left overs to stick in the fridge. 

As Eren rounds the couch he grabs the pillow at the end and plops it down next to Jean’s lap. He lies down on the couch, facing away from the tv, legs tucked up a little bit so he doesn’t have them hanging over the arm rest. 

Jean looks down at him with concern and lowers the volume of the TV. “You tired?”

“No.” And that’s all he gets.

He’s quiet lying there and very still. His breathing is slow and even, like he’s asleep. Jean lifts his hand and pets Eren’s head, running his fingers through his messy hair. Eren isn’t sleeping, he opens his eyes and looks up at Jean with his eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.

“Sorry.”

Before Jean can pull his hand away, Eren pust his own hand over Jean’s on top of his head. 

“Keep going.”

-

For the next two and a half months they repeat that evening. Eren will show up at Jean’s door, usually unannounced. Jean will cook for them while Eren stands in the kitchen and watches him work. The rest of the night is spent on the couch, Jean sitting on one end with Eren’s head in his lap and his fingers playing with Eren’s hair. It’s rare that Eren will ever face the TV when it’s on and usually it’s a 50/50 chance that he’ll stay over or go back home. They still don’t talk about whatever is bothering Eren or why it’s Jean that makes him feel better. Jean never pushes for answers because, just like with the dancing, he likes these moments just being with Eren. Normally being around Eren, everything is loud and chaotic, but this…this somehow feels nice.

-

The reason doesn’t dawn on Jean until one of the first cooler days of Autumn. Watching the leaves change color and fall, floating, to the ground. 

Eren was only 12 when his mom passed away. It was sudden and it was quick. What started as, what was thought, as a cold progressively got worse and she needed to be hospitalized. The doctors couldn’t work fast enough to fight whatever was happening to her. After 11 days, 5 of those days spent in the hospital, she was gone. 

Her passing hit Eren hard. He was extremely close to her, more so than his father who travelled a lot. He grieved for months, which was completely understandable for a 12 year old. It took almost a year to get back to some semblance of himself.

Jean thinks of all the times he ever saw Eren with him mom. A shy Eren standing next to her, hand clutched in the fabric of her skirt and her hand on top of his head. Eren, bouncing up and down with excitement, explaining juvenile nonsense, and her hands on the tops of his shoulders to get him to settle down. He hand rustling his hair to get a laugh out of him when he was down. When Eren was angry, face and ears flushed red, eyes shiny with tears, she’d kneel in front of him and wipe his over grown bangs from his forehead. It was always her touch that soothed Eren. He lost his source of calm when she passed away.

-

Ninety percent of the time, Eren is a generally happy and energetic guy. Every once in a while he falls into, what he calls, a funk. Sometimes there are days where he just doesn’t feel like being happy. His funks don’t default to sadness though. It could be anger, annoyance, frustration, confusion…and sometimes a combination. It usually just lasts a day or two at most and then he’s right back to his normal self. When he gets into a funk he doesn’t want people around him to try and make him feel better. He needs to let the emotions take there course so they don’t build up. Armin and Mikasa always tried to make him feel better, trying to figure out what was wrong so they could help. Nothing was ever wrong though. Eren kind of concluded that since he’s happy most of the time all his negative emotions get backed up and he just needs the day to get them all out, reset. The two of them never really got that though. 

Eren can’t let the funk run its course with the two of them around so he sought out a place where he could find the same calm he got as a kid. Now you’d think a night club would be the last place to find calm, but for a while it worked for him. He went there in hopes that maybe a stranger’s touch would help him. And it kind of did. But then, Jean found him.

The first night he danced with Jean he felt better than the last few times he went to this club by himself. Then when they started dancing closer with their bodies touching, Eren was calm. 

Eren was never out to find a mother’s touch, nothing or no one could ever fill that for him. Originally when he started going out, he thought any touch would be satisfactory, but he learned quickly that that wasn’t true. 

He craved Jean’s touch. Not in a sexual way, even though their dancing could be contradictory to that thought. It was never where Jean touched him that made him feel better, it was the way he touched him. His hands gently gliding over his body, no hesitance or rough handling. Every few songs he’d feel a reassuring squeeze on his hips or waist. It was always soothing and maybe a little hypnotic. But those nights on Jean’s couch with just his hands tangled in Eren’s hair, it brought him back to the days with his mom. Not that Jean specifically reminded Eren of him mom, it was the way Eren felt, the secure warm feeling, that reminded him. 

He started going to see Jean even if he wasn’t in a funk. He just wanted to be there. In the course of the last few months Eren has noticed he’d feel better at just the sight of Jean before he even curled up on his couch. It was no longer just his touch that made him feel better, it was just Jean. Eren realized he felt something for Jean, he just wasn’t sure of the capacity. It’s more than just simple friends.

-

The same day Jean figures out Eren’s coping mechanism, he gets a text from Armin, the first in months. He immediately goes to the club.

Eren is still easy to spot in the fluorescent crowd, the black spot in the mass. As Jean makes his way toward him, Eren sees him coming.He slows his bouncing and sends Jean a small smile. Upon reaching him, Jean wraps him in a hug, an arm secure around his shoulder and the other slightly raised with a hand pressed to the back of his head. He feels Eren squeeze his arms around his ribs and tuck his face into his neck. This is what Eren needed…holding Jean and having him hold him back in return.

Jean is the first to pull back and holds the side of Eren’s face. “You ok?”

“I’m fine now.”

The blonde lets out a breath with a smile and dips Eren’s head to kiss him on the forehead. He’s quick to realize what he’s done and pulls back, eyes wide and about to apologize, but Eren beams at him, the biggest smile Jean’s seen in a really long time.

They don’t stay at the club for long after that and they leave, Jean’s arm over his shoulders and Eren’s wrapped around Jean’s waist. It isn’t too late so they head to Jean’s to watch a short movie. Eren sits up next to Jean on the couch, or more upright than usual. He’s completely pressed into Jean’s side, using his shoulder as a headrest. Their hands lay relaxed next to each other between them, and every once in a while their fingers brush together. 

That night when they share the bed, Jean sleeps on his back with Eren snuggled up next to him using his bicep as a pillow.

Morning comes fast, filling the bedroom with light at such an early hour. The two of the get up minutes apart and eat breakfast together. As usual, neither of them bring up the night before. Both of them are thinking the same thing but don’t want to bring it up in fear that their wrong. So they settle on mundane small talk. 

Jean gets dressed so he can take Eren home. The car ride is quiet and it’s a little uncomfortable, at least for Jean. It’s eating at him at what Eren could possibly be thinking right now. Last night he thought they were getting somewhere and he wants to talk about it, wants to know what Eren is feeling…more specifically about him. It isn’t long drive and they arrive at Eren’s building before Jean builds up the courage to ask him anything. 

Eren thanks him as usual but hesitates reaching for the door handle. He bites on his lower lip and looks back at Jean who’s staring at his hands in his lap. When Jean realizes that Eren hasn’t left the car yet he looks over at him. Eren looks back at him for a moment before he cups Jean’s jaw and leans in to press their lips together. 

The kiss is quick. Eren pulls back after a few seconds hesitant to meet Jean’s eyes. But when he looks up, Jean is smiling at him and he glances down at his lips before leaning in again. Their lips move with each other like their bodies move on the dance floor and there’s a quick slide of tongues before they pull apart. Eren has a slight blush on his cheeks and Jean is very sure his blush is more prominent.

“I’ll um, talk to you later.” he’s trying to keep his obnoxiously wide smile at bay.

Jean doesn’t seem to be fighting back his smile. “Ok.”

One more peck on the cheek and Eren climbs out of the car.

-

For years it felt like an unfinished puzzle inside Eren’s chest. All the pieces had complicated, jagged edges that he just couldn’t figure out. Each time he was with Jean, it felt like one of those pieces finally found its connection. And just kissing Jean now slid the last piece of the puzzle in place.

**Author's Note:**

> At least it ended happy...??


End file.
